Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Guide – The Mother Garden by Robin Romm
From a young writer of enormous talent comes the extraordinary debut collection, The Mother Garden. Written with humor, uncommon wisdom, and exquisite imagination, these powerful stories take place in the moments before and after loss. Robin Romm weaves together stories of mothers, fathers, lovers, dogs and objects that disappear and reappear, creating a landscape of uncertainty. We see people struggling to keep their feet on the ground as life continues to shift disorientingly about them. Though vividly realistic, these stories are infused with the bizarre – a man uses a chicken egg to test whether or not he is ready for fatherhood; a daughter plants a garden of mothers to replace her own; a deadbeat father is found sleeping in the desert after disappearing for twenty-six years; a young woman forms a strange connection with her dead mother’s beads. Though Romm plumbs the depths of grief, the stores don’t land there – instead they offer a tender and irreverent exploration of life, death, love and the beauty of being alive.
Questions for Discussion
- Why do you think the author chose the Amy Hempel quotation for the epigraph? Do the characters in The Mother Garden demonstrate loss of faith and/or faith in loss?
- While you were reading, where do you imagine that Gracie, the woman who found herself mysteriously washed to shore in “The Arrival”, came from? Why do you think Romm chose to leave any sort of revelation about the circumstances of Gracie’s strange arrival out of the story? Why does Gracie inspire a bit of a revival for Nina’s mother?
- Is the narrator’s father in “Lost and Found” truly her father? Why or why not? For the narrator and Duncan, what do their fathers, or a father figure, mean in terms of their own identities?
- What do you think is meant by the title of the third story, “Where Nothing Is”?
- At the end of “The Egg Game,” were you surprised by India’s reaction to Uri after he threw the egg into the yard?
- How did you react to Becca’s questions about Milo’s suicide in “The Tilt” (p. 77)? Why is Becca so preoccupied by Milo’s death and Anna’s current condition? What do you imagine would happen in the final seconds before death?
- Do you think that Matteo’s reaction to Yael’s way of coping is unfair in “The Beads”? Does Yael react to her mother’s death inappropriately or irrationally? Why do you suppose Romm chose the metaphor of the beads?
- What does The Mother Garden reveal or suggest about the effect that death has on romantic relationships and marriages? How do the characters in these stories react to infidelity? What are Gerard’s motives in “Celia’s Fish”?
- What is the significance of the book’s title? Why do you think the author chose The Mother Garden as opposed to using the title of one of the other stories in the book?
- Discuss the portrayal of mothers throughout these stories. What roles do they play and how do they affect their children, both in life and in death? Why does Claire create the Mother Garden? What does she learn through the process?
- Consider how each story concludes. Is there redemption or resolution in these stories? If not, do you think there was a reason for that?
- Which story was your favorite?
Enhance Your Book Club
Share with the group a special memento that reminds you of a relative that has passed away. Celebrate the person’s life by describing what that relative meant to you and what the memento means to you now.
In honor of “Family Epic,” share your own ghost stories with your group.
The New York Times Book Review compared The Mother Garden to Ann Beattie’s “early slice-of-life stories.” Read a few stories from Beattie’s Follies, Distortions, Chilly Scenes of Winter, Burning House, Falling in Place or Secrets and Surprises. Do you agree that Romm and Beattie’s writing share similarities?
A Conversation with Robin Romm
- Even though the stories could be considered magically real, your characters are very realistic. Were any of them or the episodes in The Mother Garden inspired by people or events in your own life?
- Many of your stories deal with death and grief. How does writing dark material affect you – is it difficult, therapeutic? In “No Small Feat,” the narrator explains, “I don’t have a patent on death. I wouldn’t want one. Really, he can have the subject—the whole big feat of it. I’d love to write stories about surfing teenagers, international spies, funny grandmothers, dogs that fly. But death is my map, the thing I’ve been living next to for years” (p. 120). Does this statement in any way reflect your own feelings about your subject matter?
Well, it certainly did while I was writing it. I feel freer now to write about funny grandmothers and dogs that fly, but for a while, these subjects were simply impossible. Sometimes we are tethered to our circumstances, and this felt true to me for many years. In terms of writing dark material, I think it’s a common misconception that it’s difficult, therapeutic, or cathartic. Writing is not therapy for me. It’s a way of putting shape on the big chaotic world we all live in. It’s a very active, imaginative project and it is full of a rushing joy when the words and images come in an interesting way. I have always been intrigued by questions that are difficult to answer. For me, questions are the most humble kind of sentence—they let in all the mystery. And my stories (and characters) are far more interested in what they don’t and can’t know than in what they can. I hope that I can prevent the reader from leaving with easy answers about life and death, because that is the truest thing for me.
- You were born in Eugene, OR. Some of the stories take place in Oregon and most take place primarily on the west coast. What about the Pacific Northwest is particularly inspiring for you? As a writer, do you think that it’s important to choose a setting with which you’re familiar?
My writing process is very organic. For instance, I imagine a forest and I can see potential story turns in that forest. If I can’t see the forest, well, I couldn’t see the Spanish moss or the wild carrots. It’s access to the small details that make the story whir. If I tried to set a story in Antarctica, a place I have never been, I would have trouble figuring out how to use the pieces of that world to further a story. My characters are a product of their worlds, and since they are also a product of me, I need to know their worlds.
I do find the Pacific Northwest deeply inspiring. I love the green and the rain and the feeling that you can look out from the edge of the country. I also grew up in a city that was pretty counterculture and I think some of the irreverence in the book must have its root there.
- Where did the idea for the character named “Satan” in “A Romance” come from?
- There are several dogs featured throughout your stories in The Mother Garden. Did you make a conscious decision to include them in so many stories?
- Your characters are often haunted by their lost loved ones – many ghosts appear throughout The Mother Garden. Do you believe that we can communicate with the spirits of our deceased relatives in the way that the narrator can in “Family Epic” or is it closer to the way the Claire responds to her mother in “The Mother Garden”?
I do believe in ghosts. Here is a strange story. The summer after my mother died, my boyfriend and I went to my family’s cabin on the Oregon coast. (This is the cabin in “The Arrival”.) My mother loved that cabin—she lobbied hard for it and seemed to see something mysterious and comforting in the gray, roiling sea. She liked that you could be so close to the ocean and all its deathly implications while children and dogs frolicked on the sand.
That summer, my father asked me to clean out my mother’s things from the closet. He couldn’t face the task. In a rush to be done with it, I ripped out the jackets and bathrobes and shoved them all into black bags. That night, my boyfriend and I slept in my mother’s bed and suddenly, we were assaulted by the strangest smell. It seemed to rise from the floor and had a bitter, citrus tinge. A storm had moved in and the room filled with wind. Neither of us could sleep and I was filled with the sense that I had angered someone.
I don’t think ghosts can linger forever, but my mother spoke about having a sense of her mother after she was gone and I certainly felt that. I think what I am trying to suggest in “The Mother Garden” and in “Family Epic” is the lack of control the living have over how and when they will be confronted with the past. This is true of interacting with ghosts, but also of interacting with memory. After someone dies, you might be fine walking through the cemetery. You might be untouched by photos or old letters, but suddenly, in the gym, you find yourself doubled over with grief.
- Faced with grief, your characters find various ways to cope. Do you think that dealing with loss is a defining moment in a person’s life? Or is it the opposite – does loss obscure the person you once were?
- After writing a collection of short stories, do you find that you have stronger affections for some characters more than others? Will any of these characters appear in future projects?
- In “Family Epic” you write, “At this point, I’d like the page to burst into song, but pages don’t do that” (p. 173). Have you ever written songs or is it something that you might like to do in the future?
- The Mother Garden is your debut short story collection and your memoir, The Mercy Papers, will be published in January 2009. How different is the writing process between short stories and a memoir? Do you have any interest in writing a novel?
Fiction requires an almost insane faith in the unknown. You are investing hours of your life in a dark little room with a notebook or computer. You forgo coffee dates and parties. You make up characters and a world, a desire, a problem. But there is no guarantee this will work out for you. I abandon more stories than I finish. But the only way to write a book of stories is to believe that some of them will rise up and take over, that you will find that wave inside your subconscious and be able to ride it home.
Memoir requires something else. The writing of “The Mercy Papers” required faith that my feelings, as small or mean as they might have been at times, were valuable because of their honesty. It required hope that I would be able to reach people with my telling of this story. That there would be people out there who didn’t want a regular self-help manual, that craved complicated truth and rawness, that hoped to find someone speaking their conflicting feelings. And there is an element of the unknown in writing memoir. I knew what happened to me—but I needed to pick exactly the right moments, the right details, to make this come true for you. No one has the map for writing books, despite how many there are for sale. It’s an instinctual process that requires gumption, faith, discipline, and time. And an understanding that it is the small things that make the big things, that complexity and conflict drive us forward, that there will never be a clear road to walk down. There will always be an element of chaos. And folded into this will be violence and beauty—the bones of story.
I’d love to write a novel. But I haven’t done it yet.